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people, but none the less alarmingly real-that I found I had been introduced to by my nurse before I was six years old, and used to be forced to go back to at night without at all wanting to go. If we all knew our own minds (in a more enlarged sense than the popular acceptation of that phrase), I suspect we should find our nurses responsible for most of the dark corners we are forced to go back to, against our wills.

rolled out the crust, dropping large tears upon it all the time because he was so cross, and when she had lined the dish with crust and had cut the crust all ready to fit the top, the Captain called out, "I see the meat in the glass !" And the bride looked up at the glass, just in time to see the Captain cutting her head off; and he chopped her in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker's, and ate it all, and picked the bones.

Captain Murderer went on in this way, prospering exceedingly, until he came to choose a bride from two twin sisters, and at first didn't know which to choose. For, though one was fair and the other dark, they were both equally beautiful. But the fair twin loved him, and the dark twin hated him, so he chose the fair one. The dark twin would have prevented the marriage if she could, but she couldn't; however, Murderer, she stole out and climbed his garden wall, and looked in at his window through a chink in the shutter, and saw him having his teeth filed sharp. Next day she listened all day, and heard him make his joke about the houselamb. And that day month, he had the paste rolled out, and cut the fair twin's head off, and chopped her in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker's, and ate it all, and picked the bones.

The first diabolical character that intruded himself on my peaceful youth (as I called to mind that day at Dullborough), was a certain Captain Murderer. This wretch must have been an offshoot of the Blue Beard family, but I had no suspicion of the consanguinity in those times. His warning name would seem to have awakened no general prejudice against him, for he was admitted into the best society and possessed immense wealth. Captain Murderer's mission was matrimony, and the gratification of a canni-on the night before it, much suspecting Captain bal appetite with tender brides. On his marriage morning, he always caused both sides of the way to church to be planted with curious flowers; and when his bride said, " Dear Captain Murderer, I never saw flowers like these before: what are they called?" he answered, "They are called Garnish for house-lamb," and laughed at his ferocious practical joke in a horrid manner, disquieting the minds of the noble bridal company, with a very sharp show of teeth, then displayed for the first time. He made love in a coach and six, and married in a coach and twelve, and all his horses were milk-white horses with one red spot on the back which he caused to be hidden by the harness. For, the spot would come there, though every horse was milk white when Captain Murderer bought him. And the spot was young bride's blood. (To this terrific point I am indebted for my first personal experience of a shudder and cold beads on the forehead.) When Captain Murderer had made an end of feasting and revelry, and had dismissed the noble guests, and was alone with his wife on the day month after their marriage, it was his whimsical custom to produce a golden rolling-pin and a silver pieboard. Now, there was this special feature in the Captain's courtships, that he always asked if the young lady could make pie-crust; and if she couldn't by nature or education, she was taught. Well. When the bride saw Captain Murderer produce the golden rolling-pin and silver pieboard, she remembered this, and turned up her laced-silk sleeves to make a pie. The Captain brought out a silver pie-dish of immense capacity, and the Captain brought out flour and butter and eggs and all things needful, except the inside of the pie; of materials for the staple of the pie itself, the Captain brought out none. Then said the lovely bride, Dear Captain Murderer, what pie is this to be ?" He replied, "A meat pie." Then said the lovely bride, "Dear Captain Murderer, I see no meat." The Captain humorously retorted, Look in the glass." She looked in the glass, but still she saw no meat, and then the Captain roared with laughter, and, suddenly frowning and drawing his sword, bade her roll out the crust. So she

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Now, the dark twin had had her suspicions much increased by the filing of the Captain's teeth, and again by the house-lamb joke. Putting all things together when he gave out that her sister was dead, she divined the truth, and determined to be revenged. So she went up to Captain Murderer's house, and knocked at the knocker and pulled at the bell, and when the Captain came to the door, said: "Dear Captain Murderer, marry me next, for I always loved you and was jealous of my sister." The Captain took it as a compliment, and made a polite answer, and the marriage was quickly arranged. On the night before it, the bride again climbed to his window, and again saw him having his teeth filed sharp. At this sight, she laughed such a terrible laugh, at the chink in the shutter, that the Captain's blood curdled, and he said: "I hope nothing has disagreed with me!" that, she laughed again, a still more terrible laugh, and the shutter was opened and search made, but she was nimbly gone and there was no one. Next day they went to church in the coach and twelve, and were married. And that day month, she rolled the pie-crust out, and Captain Murderer cut her head off, and chopped her in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker's, and ate it all, and picked the bones.

At

But before she began to roll out the paste she had taken a deadly poison of a most awful character, distilled from toads' eyes and spiders' knees; and Captain Murderer had hardly picked her last bone, when he began to swell, and to turn blue, and to be all over spots, and to scream. And he went on swelling and turning bluer and being more all over spots and scream

(I don't know why, but this fact of the Devil's
expressing himself in rhyme was peculiarly
trying to me.) Chips looked up when he heard
the words, and there he saw the Devil with
saucer eyes that squinted on a terrible great
continually. And whenever he winked his eyes,
showers of blue sparks came out, and his eye-
lashes made a clattering like flints and steels
striking lights. And hanging over one of his
arms by the handle was an iron pot, and under
that arm was a bushel of tenpenny nails, and
under his other arm was half a ton of copper, and
sitting on one of his shoulders was a rat that
could speak. So the Devil said again:
"A Lemon has pips,

And a Yard has ships,

ing, until he reached from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall; and then, at one o'clock in the morning, he blew up with a loud explosion. At the sound of it, all the milk-white horses in the stables broke their halters and went mad, and then they galloped over everybody in Cap-scale, and that struck out sparks of blue fire tain Murderer's house (beginning with the family blacksmith who had filed his teeth) until the whole were dead, and then they galloped away. Hundreds of times did I hear this legend of Captain Murderer, in my early youth, and added hundreds of times was there a mental compulsion upon me in bed, to peep in at his window as the dark twin peeped, and to revisit his horrible house, and look at him in his blue and spotty and screaming stage, as he reached from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall. The young woman who brought me acquainted with Captain Murderer, had a fiendish enjoyment of my terrors, and used to begin, I remember-as a sort of introductory overture-by clawing the air with both hands, and uttering a long low hollow groan. So acutely did I suffer from this ceremony in combination with this infernal Captain, that I sometimes used to plead I thought I was hardly strong enough and old enough to hear the story again just yet. But she never spared me one word of it, and indeed commended the awful chalice to my lips as the only preservative known to science against "The Black Cat"a weird and glaring-eyed supernatural Tom, who was reputed to prowl about the world by night, sucking the breath of infancy, and who was endowed with a special thirst (as I was given to understand) for mine.

This female bard-may she have been repaid my debt of obligation to her in the matter of nightmares and perspirations!-reappears in my memory as the daughter of a shipwright. Her name was Mercy, though she had none on me. There was something of a ship-building flavour in the following story. As it always recurs to me in a vague association with calomel pills, I believe it to have been reserved for dull nights

when I was low with medicine.

There was once a shipwright, and he wrought in a Government Yard, and his name was Chips. And his father's name before him was Chips, and his father's name before him was Chips, and they were all Chipses. And Chips the father had sold himself to the Devil for an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny nails and half a ton of copper and a rat that could speak; and Chips the grandfather had sold himself to the Devil for an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny nails and half a ton of copper and a rat that could speak; and Chips the great-grandfather had disposed of himself in the same direction on the same terms; and the bargain had run in the family for a long long time. So one day when young Chips was at work in the Dock Slip all alone, down in the dark hold of an old Seventy; four that was hauled up for repairs, the Devil presented himself, and remarked:

"A Lemon has pips,
And a Yard has ships,
And I'll have Chips!"

And I'll have Chips!"

(The invariable effect of this alarming tau tology on the part of the Evil Spirit was to deprive me of my senses for some moments.) So his work. Chips answered never a word, but went on with the rat that could speak. "What are you doing, Chips?" said "I am putting in new planks where you and your gang have eaten old away," said Chips." But we'll eat them too," said the rat that could speak; "and we'll let in the water, and we'll drown the crew, and we'll eat them too." Chips, being only a shipwright, and not a Man-of-war's man, said, "You are welcome to it." But he couldn't keep his eyes off the half a ton of copper or the bushel of tenpenny nails; for nails and copper are a shipaway with them whenever they can. wright's sweethearts, and shipwrights will run So the Devil said, "I see what you are looking_at, Chips. You had better strike the bargain. You know the terms. Your father before you was well acquainted with them, and so were your grandfather and great-grandfather before him." Says Chips, "I like the copper, and I like the the rat." Says the Devil, fiercely, "You can't nails, and I don't mind the pot, but I don't like have the metal without him—and he's a curiosity. I'm going." Chips, afraid of losing the half a ton of copper and the bushel of nails, then said,

Give us hold!" So he got the copper and the nails and the pot and the rat that could speak, and the Devil vanished.

and he would have sold the pot; but whenever he Chips sold the copper, and he sold the nails, offered it for sale, the rat was in it, and the dealers dropped it, and would have nothing to say to the bargain. So Chips resolved to kill the rat, and, being at work in the Yard one day with a the iron pot with the rat in it on the other, he great kettle of hot pitch on one side of him and turned the scalding pitch into the pot, and filled it full. Then he kept his eye upon it till it cooled and hardened, and then he let it stand for twenty days, and then he heated the pitch again and turned it back into the kettle, and then he sank the pot in water for twenty days more, and then he got the smelters to put it in the furnace for twenty days more, and then they gave it him out, red hot, and looking like red-hot glass in

stead of iron-yet there was the rat in it, just the same as ever! And the moment it caught his eye, it said with a jeer:

"A Lemon has pips,

And a Yard has ships,

And I'll have Chips!"

(For this Refrain I had waited since its last appearance, with inexpressible horror, which now culminated.) Chips now felt certain in his own mind that the rat would stick to him; the rat, answering his thought, said, "I will-like pitch !" Now, as the rat leaped out of the pot when it had spoken, and made off, Chips began to hope that it wouldn't keep its word. But a terrible thing happened next day. For, when dinner-time came and the Dock-bell rang to strike work, he put his rule into the long pocket at the side of his trousers, and there he found a rat-not that rat, but another rat. And in his hat, he found another; and in his pocket-handkerchief, another; and in the sleeves of his coat, when he pulled it on to go to dinner, two more. And from that time he found himself so frightfully intimate with all the rats in the Yard, that they climbed up his legs when he was at work, and sat on his tools while he used them. And they could all speak to one another, and he understood what they said. And they got into his lodging, and into his bed, and into his teapot, and into his beer, and into his boots. And he was going to be married to a corn-chandler's daughter; and when he gave her a workbox he had himself made for her, a rat jumped out of it; and when he put his arm round her waist, a rat clung about her; so the marriage was broken off, though the banns were already twice put up which the parish clerk well remembers, for, as he handed the book to the clergyman for the second time of asking, a large fat rat ran over the leaf. (By this time a special cascade of rats was rolling down my back, and the whole of my small listening person was overrun with them. At intervals ever since, I have been morbidly afraid of my own pocket, lest my exploring hand should find a specimen or two of those vermin in it.)

You may believe that all this was very terrible to Chips; but even all this was not the worst. He knew besides, what the rats were doing, wherever they were. So sometimes he would cry aloud, when he was at his club at night, "Oh! Keep the rats out of the convicts' burying-ground! Don't let them do that!" Or, "There's one of them at the cheese down stairs!" Or, "There's two of them smelling at the baby in the garret !" Or, other things of that sort. At last, he was voted mad, and lost his work in the Yard, and could get no other work. But King George wanted men, so before very long he got pressed for a sailor. And so he was taken off in a boat one evening to his ship, lying at Spithead, ready to sail. And so the first thing he made out in her as he got near her, was the figure-head of the old Seventy-four, where he had seen the Devil. She was called the Argonaut, and they rowed

right under the bowsprit where the figure-head of the Argonaut, with a sheepskin in his hand and a blue gown on, was looking out to sea; and sitting staring on his forehead was the rat who could speak, and his exact words were these: "Chips ahoy! Old boy! We've pretty well eat them too, and will drown the crew, and will eat them too!" (Here I always became exceedingly faint, and would have asked for water, but that I was speechless.)

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The ship was bound for the Indies; and if you don't know where that is, you ought to it, and angels will never love you. (Here I felt myself an outcast from a future state.) The ship set sail that very night, and she sailed, and sailed, and sailed. Chips's feelings were dreadful. Nothing ever equalled his terrors. No wonder. At last, one day he asked leave to speak to the Admiral. The Admiral giv' leave. Chips went down on his knees in the Great State Cabin. "Your Honour, unless your Honour, without a moment's loss of time makes sail for the nearest shore, this is a dooned ship, and her name is the Coffin!" "Young man, your words are a madman's words." "Your Honour no; they are nibbling us away." "They" "Your Honour, them dreadful rats. Dust and hollowness where solid oak ought to be! Rafs nibbling a grave for every man on board! Oh! Does your Honour love your Lady and your pretty children ?" "Yes, my man, to be sure." "Then, for God's sake, make for the nearest shore, for at this present moment the rats are all stopping in their work, and are all looking straight towards you with bare teeth, and are all saying to one another that you shall never, never, never, never, see your Lady and your children more." "My poor fellow, you are a case for the doctor. Sentry, take care of this man !"

So he was bled and he was blistered, and he was this and that, for six whole days and nights. So then he again asked leave to speak to the Admiral. The Admiral giv' leave. He went down on his knees in the Great State Cabin. "Now, Admiral, you must die! You took no warning; you must die! The rats are never wrong in their calculations, and they make out that they'll be through, at twelve to-night. So, you must die!With me and all the rest!" And so at twelve o'clock there was a great leak reported in the ship, and a torrent of water rushed in and nothing could stop it, and they all went down, every living soul. And what the ratsbeing water-rats-left of Chips, at last floated to shore, and sitting on him was an immense overgrown rat, laughing, that dived when the corpse touched the beach and never came up. And there was a deal of seaweed on the remains. And if you get thirteen bits of seaweed, and dry them and burn them in the fire, they will go-off-like in these thirteen words as plain as plain can be:

"A Lemon has pips,

And a Yard has ships,
And I've got Chips!"

The same female bard-descended, possibly,

Charles Dickens.]

He sat down before her, and under her own eyes wrote a letter, now in our correspondent's possession, of which we give All this the French original with a translation. she herself told our correspondent, when she came to London, the week afterwards, to use her letters of introduction. The one addressed to him happened to look the most promising; and, as it turned out, was fortunate for her. On trade inquiry, it was found that the swindler was offering the goods for sale; his residence was traced, himself arrested, and the whole of the property recovered for the owner.

from those terrible old Scalds who seem to have hand-made lace-a lady-was swindled, by one existed for the express purpose of addling the Courtial, of goods to the amount of some eight brains of mankind when they begin to investi-hundred pounds. It occurred at Paris, and gate languages made a standing pretence Courtial escaped to England. The lady conwhich greatly assisted in forcing me back to a sulted her friends, and got plenty of advice. number of hideous places that I would by all Some told her to put herself in the hands of means have avoided. This pretence was, that Vidocq; others gave her letters of introduction all her ghost stories had occurred to her own re- to England. She went to Vidocq, had an interlations. Politeness towards a meritorious family, view with him, told him her story, paid him his therefore forbade my doubting them, and they fee, and was much compassionated by him; he acquired an air of authentication that impaired knew perfectly how to gain the sympathy of my digestive powers for life. There was a nar- female hearts. rative concerning an unearthly animal foreboding death, which appeared in the open street to a parlour-maid who "went to fetch the beer" for supper: first (as I now recal it) assuming the likeness of a black dog, and gradually rising on its hind-legs and swelling into the semblance of some quadruped greatly surpassing a hippopotamus: which apparition-not because I deemed it in the least improbable, but because I felt it to be really too large to bear-I feebly endeavoured to explain away. But on Mercy's retorting with wounded dignity that the parlourmaid was her own sister-in-law, I perceived there was no hope, and resigned myself to this zoological phenomenon as one of my many pursuers. There was another narrative describing the apparition of a young woman who came out of a glass-case and haunted another young woman until the other young woman questioned it and elicited that its bones (Lord! To think of its being so particular about its bones !) were buried under the glass-case, whereas she required them to be interred, with every Undertaking solemnity up to twenty-four pound ten, in another parti-agi, cular place. This narrative I considered I had a personal interest in disproving, because we had glass-cases at home, and how, otherwise, was I to be guaranteed from the intrusion of young women requiring me to bury them up to twentyfour pound ten, when I had only twopence a week? But my remorseless nurse cut the ground from under my tender feet, by informing me that She was the other young woman; and I couldn't say "I don't believe you;" it was not possible.

Such are a few of the uncommercial journeys that I was forced to make, against my will, when I was very young and unreasoning. And really, as to the latter part of them, it is not so very long ago-now I come to think of it-that I was asked to undertake them once again, with a steady countenance.

VIDOCQ'S WORKS.

A CORRESPONDENT calls our attention to the opening sentence of our sketch of Vidocq,* in which it is stated that Vidocq "was no writer, and never knew the most elementary rules of grammar and orthography," and suggests that there must be error somewhere, in consequence of a particular circumstance which came to our correspondent's knowledge.

In the year 1837, a French manufacturer of * See All the Year Round, No. 64, page 331.

Vidocq's letter, addressed to some obscure man of law near the Strand, was not presented, though the book alluded to was duly sent.

Cet indi

Monsieur, J'ai l'honneur de vous prier d'avoir la bonté d'être utile et de rendre service à la dame que je charge de vous remettre cette lettre, qui vient d'avoir le malheur d'être volée et trompée par un fripon qui est à Londres en ce moment. vidu, à Paris, est sous le coup d'un mandat d'amener, qu'il n'a évité que par la fuite; aussi bien que Lafond-Arnaux, son complice. Ces deux fripons ont à l'égard de cette dame, d'une manière bien

infâme.

Cet ouvrage

Je profite de cette occasion pour vous addresser un exemplaire d'un ouvrage que je viens de publier, et qui est bien recherché tant à Paris qu'au dehors. Je m'estimerai heureux et satisfait si vous daignez l'agréer et le communiquer à vos amis. peut n'avoir pas le même mérite pour l'Angleterre que pour la france, mais il vous mettra à même, ainsi que les philantropes* et lecteurs éclairés de votre pays de connaître le langage habituel de nos voleurs, aussi bien que leurs manières de travailler.

Je regrette bien sincèrement, Monsieur, d'être obligé de vous importuner si souvent, et de ne pouvoir vous payer de réciprocité. Si je peux vous être de quelque utilité à Paris, soit pour vous, soit pour vos connaissances, je vous en prie, disposez de moi; vous me rendrez service.

tion,

J'ai l'honneur d'être avec une parfaite considera-
Monsieur,
Votre très humble et
Très obeissant serviteur,
VIDOCQ.

Paris, le 21 Avril, 1837.

Sir, I have the honour to beg you to have the goodness to be useful and to render service to the lady whom I commission to deliver you this letter, who has just had the misfortune to be robbed and deceived by a rogue who at this moment is in London.

This individual is liable, at Paris, to the consequences of a mandate to be brought up for examination, which he has only escaped by taking to flight; as well as Lafond-Arnaux his accomplice. * Errors in orthography.

These two swindlers have acted, with regard to this lady, in a very infamous manner.

I profit by the occasion to send you a copy of a work which I have just published, and which is much sought after both in Paris and out of it. I shall consider myself fortunate and satisfied if you deign to accept it and to communicate it to your friends. This work may not have the same merit for England as for france, but it will enable you as well as the philantropists and enlightened readers of your country to become acquainted with the habitual language of our thieves, as well as their modes of doing business.

I regret, Sir, very sincerely, to be obliged to trouble you so frequently, and not to be able to pay you reciprocally. If I can be of any use to you in Paris, whether for yourself or your acquaintances, dispose of me, I beg of you; you will render me a service. I have the honour to be with perfect consideration, Sir,

Your very humble and

Very obedient servant,
VIDOCQ.

sent day, the inquisitive portion of the public has no longer the slightest confidence in newspaper puffs.

It is of no use being afraid to state the fact that the best things in the world will produce nothing better than pump water unless they are helped by charlatanism, which is the touchstone of success. On this point I have certain data, and I am able to give a multitude of examples.

If M. Dupont wishes to succeed, he must lose no time in engaging some intelligent ticklers (chatouilleurs) to run about Paris and its suburbs, with the mission of whisking up (pour faire mousser) the journal, and adroitly obliging eating-house keepers, tavern keepers, lemonade sellers, pot-house keepers, and the masters of dram-shops, to take in the new democratic organ.

I am in a position to undertake this propaganda at a small expense, about the result of which there can be no doubt. You may mention it to your friend, and if he approves of my plan, let him send for me to speak to him. I will prove the efficaciousness of my means to his satisfaction.

Meanwhile, I have the honour to salute you very humbly. VIDOCQ.

Paris, the 21st of April, 1837. Our correspondent's criticism is just; but a comparison of the date of the letter (1837, when that Vidocq, in his latter days, could write, but The biographer, therefore, not only proves Vidocq had nearly completed his sixty-second also that he could write much to the purpose, year) with M. Maurice's reference to the author- furnishing a useful hint to whoever shall specuship of the book called Vidocq's Mémoires will late in setting up a rival to the Times or the clearly show that he, M. Maurice, has not made Morning Post. The book mentioned in our corany misstatement of such inaccuracy as to weaken the authority of his biography, but that he has respondent's letter is probably not the Mémoires merely made a literary slip of the pen, not ex- brought in Vidocq some forty thousand francs. proper, which excited immense curiosity, and pressing himself so clearly as he ought, but say-At first there were only two volumes, to which ing more than he really intended to say. Vidocq's he added a third. He then tried to get as far as literary accomplishments may be believed to have a fourth; but falling short of autobiographical been greatly improved after he left the police, details, he made it a sort of physiology of maleand while he was keeping the Information Office. factors, from the raw pickpocket to the finished The Mémoires were published in 1828. In nine sharper. This hotch-potch volume had equal years, a clever man may make great progress success with the others. Vidocq took it in hand in reading and writing. M. Maurice's words again eight years afterwards, and appending to are, "Vidocq n'était pas écrivain et n'avait ita dictionary of Slang-French and French-Slang, jamais connu les règles les plus élémentaires made of it a work in two volumes, entitled Les de grammaire ou d'orthographe." If he had Voleurs-Thieves-of which several editions written, as he ought, "At the time when the Mémoires were published, Vidocq was a very indifferent writer, and up to that date had never learned the rules of grammar and orthography," our correspondent would probably be satisfied. And that, without doubt, is what M. Maurice meant to say; for, towards the close of his volume, he gives, word for word, several letters which Vidocq wrote with his own hand. Here is one in which he presumes to interfere with so literary an enterprise as the starting of a newspaper:

34, Rue Saint-Louis, au Marais, the 4th of January, 1850. Monsieur,-It appears that M. Dupont de Bussac, your friend, is the head editor of a journal which ought to make a great noise, and whose success ought to be insured by the merit of the editor.

were sold. This, doubtless, was the present sent to the limb of the law residing in the outskirts of the Strand. To explain the apparent popularity of such a book, it ought to be stated that Vidocq-an extensive money-lender-made take five or six copies of Les Voleurs, at full every one whose bills he accepted or discounted, price, as if they were ready money. Upon the list of his customers, figured almost all the inferior clerks and employés of the public offices. He thus turned them to a double account; he got usurious interest out of them, and he made use of them as spies. They dared not do otherwise than keep him well up to the mark with information.

To give a specimen of this performance: Immediately after the pickpockets, Vidocq places But you are even better aware than I am that at on the ascending scale of crime the Cambrioleurs, the present day, the most useful, the best combined or ransackers of chambers and suites of rooms, enterprises, are jeopardised and often fall into oblivion into which they obtain admission by the aid of if they are presented without being preceded and ac- false keys or housebreaking. He divides them companied by puffs (la réclame)! But at the pre-into three categories; the Cambrioleurs à la

* Errors in orthography.

flan, simpletons, débutants, who insinuate themselves into a house without obtaining any infor

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